Saturday, November 20, 2010

According to Gu Jian, Deputy Director of the Network Security Protection Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), China is all set to fight against the hacking attacks as the government is drafting law governing the punishment of hackers and other cyber offences, as reported by ShanghaiDaily on November 11, 2010.

He further highlighted that presently, lawmakers are working on the judicial interpretations of the new law, which will be released by the end of 2010.

Gu stated that nearly 80% of the machines in China are facing the problem of botnet attacks, whereby hackers use malicious software to attack and compromise machines.

Remarkably, botnet can be defined as a network of systems that have had malware installed into them and are managed by cybercrooks, while the users are not aware of the computer hacking.

Disturbingly, according to a report released in earlier 2010 by the China National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team (CNCERT) revealed that 71% of the global botnets are placed in China. Of which, majority are administered by hackers of foreign origin.

Commenting on the finding, Gu stated that, China, a land of around 440 Million netizens is the key victim of cyber criminals, as reported by the web portal China on November 11, 2010. Gu also said that over 80% of the online attacks targeting China's government agencies official websites come from foreign locations.

Gu further highlighted that, to fight against overseas criminals, China has been making remarkable attempts to co-operate with overseas government agencies. Since 2004, China's public security departments have offered assistance to around 41 countries in 721 online criminal instances.

Until now, Chinese police have set up bilateral cooperation agreements with 30 nations including the United States, Germany, and the UK.

However, according to Gu, existing collaborations between various governments are far away from fighting against overseas cybercrimes.

Conclusively, Gu stated that late response is one of the major problems. Since 2009, China's police agents have asked for investigation assistance for 13 cybercrimes to the U.S. FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), including instances concerning fake bank website and child pornography. But, the Chinese police have not got any response till now.